Mr. Reich in his 17 Feb. post on his blog, sees the economy as some sort of a magic goose which lays a pie once a year and thinks that he and the rest of the goose guardians have the sacred duty to see that each citizen gets their fair share.Republicans would rather no one notice their campaign to shrink the pie even further with additional tax cuts for the rich.
But just how does this money pie materialize? How does currency get its value? Unfortunately theories abound. At one extreme is the "nothing" theory which may be somewhat whimsically characterized as follows.
The short answer is nothing. There are no real assets, public or private, that are specifically pledged to back Federal Reserve Notes. The notes are backed by the "full faith and credit," of the United States Government. Which means accept my IOU or go to court. It is like the Mafia issuing its own currency backed by the full faith and credit of Big Angie and Fat Tony. If anybody dont take this currency just tell them they gonna walk funny for the rest of their lives.
Think of it this way. Could Walmart issue currency? Could Ford issue currency? The reason the US can issue currency is that its currency is backed by Intel and Microsoft and General Dynamics and Caterpillar.
Which is the reason why currency issued by countries which have nothing the world wants is not a currency which is worth a damn. Huge successful US companies competing at the world scale are what prop up the dollar.
Maybe the piemakers should have a say on how the pie is distributed. Leave Reich and the rest of the goose guardians contemplating their fascist utopia while peeping between the potted palms of the faculty lounge.
Moreover, in the redistributionist scheme of things, Reich seems to view the poor as some sort of species inferior to the goose guardians:
(The Republican policy is to pit) the poor against the working middle class.
It is, then, the guardians job to preserve them from extinction and save them from Darwinian realities. In fact it is the very entitlement/victim mentality drummed into the poor by the goose guardians that undermine their social mobility and keep them a class. Think of the breathtaking condescension of our conscience stricken goose guardians - THE POOR, indeed.
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